As early as the 1730s, Boston's three original burial grounds--Copp's Hill, King's Chapel, and the Old Granary--became so crowded that new burials were often made four-deep or in small, common trenches. Parts of old coffins and bones sometimes were unearthed when new burials were made in common or family tombs.¹

1. Compare Drawings 1 and 2. What is the same? What is different? What words would you use to describe each of the engravings?

2. What do you think the people in Drawing 2 are doing?

3. Imagine you were the older person depicted in Drawing 2, the 1847 engraving. What do you think you would have been saying to your young companion?

¹Blanche Linden-Ward, Silent City on a Hill: Landscape of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989), 150.

* The drawings on this screen have a resolution of 72 dots per inch (dpi), and therefore will print poorly. You can obtain a larger version of Drawing 1 and Drawing 2,
but be aware that each file will take as much as 55 seconds to load with a 28.8K modem.